Question

Given a project with 2 files: fileA and fileB. Both were once added to a git-repository. Then I added fileA to .gitignore (and flushed the git-cache), so that in the current master only fileB is present. I would like to clone this repository to another machine now, but fileA is missing.

The next thing I did was to create a branch from the commit where both files were present. The big question now is: how do I get back to the master commit without losing that file again?

Sorry for the title. I was trying to be descriptive, but ..

Answer 1

If all you need to do is restore one file, you can do that with git checkout:

$ git checkout <revision_where_fileA_exists> fileA
$ git add fileA
$ git commit -m "Restored fileA"

You will also have to edit your .gitignore so that it isn’t ignoring fileA anymore.